One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

quiet as an electric alarm about to go off,

it’s like an old clock that won’t tell time but won’t stop neither, with the hands bent out of shape and the face bare of numbers and the alarm bell rusted silent, an old, worthless clock that just keeps ticking and cuckooing without meaning nothing.

Pausing at the door, she draws the timid young bride to one side and offers her twenty dollars of her own: ‘Go, you poor unfortunate underfed child, go, and buy yourself a decent dress. I realize your husband can’t afford it, but here, take this, and go.’ And the couple is forever indebted to her benevolence.”

“This world . . . belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.

Cheswick never goes on; he’s one of these guys who’ll make a big fuss like he’s going to lead an attack, holler charge and stomp up and down a minute, take a couple steps, and quit.

“Maybe not you, buddy, but the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that’s the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn’t anybody laughing. I haven’t heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

“My friend, I don’t recall anything about psychopaths being able to move mountains in addition to their other noteworthy assets.”

You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself.

“A man needs to see the world news, don’t he? God, they coulda bombed Washington and it’d been a week before we’d of heard.” “Yes? And how do you feel about relinquishing your world news to watch a bunch of men play baseball?” “We can’t have both, huh? No, I suppose not. Well, what the dickens—I don’t guess they’ll bomb us this week.”

I’d take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.

It’s fall coming, I kept thinking, fall coming; just like that was the strangest thing ever happened. Fall. Right outside here it was spring a while back, then it was summer, and now it’s fall—that’s sure a curious idea.

“I want something done!” Cheswick suddenly yelled again. “I ain’t no little kid!” He stamped his foot and looked around him like he was lost and might break out crying any minute.

“You don’t have to apologize for my inadequacies, my friend. It neither fits your character nor complements mine.”

“I don’t think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.” McMurphy shakes his head. “Hoo-wee! Electricity through the head. Man, that’s like electrocuting a guy for murder.” “The reasons for both activities are much more closely related than you might think; they are both cures.”

You got to swallow your pride sometimes and keep an eye out for old Number One.”

Papa says if you don’t watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.

I think McMurphy knew better than we did that our tough looks were all show, because he still wasn’t able to get a real laugh out of anybody. Maybe he couldn’t understand why we weren’t able to laugh yet, but he knew you can’t really be strong until you can see a funny side to things. In fact, he worked so hard at pointing out the funny side of things that I was wondering a little if maybe he was blind to the other side, if maybe he wasn’t able to see what it was that parched laughter deep inside your stomach.

All that five thousand kids lived in those five thousand houses, owned by those guys that got off the train.

Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.

He who—what was it?—walks out of step, hears another drum.